If you went to your email inbox right now and counted up, you would probably find that you subscribe to at least one if not several email newsletters published by a web site that you enjoy going to from time to time. We like getting email newsletters in the same way we like to subscribe to magazines at home. They are fun, informative, sometimes humorous and they give us perspective on a specialized field of knowledge.
So it might not surprise you to learn that the newsletter is one of the most successful forms of internet marketing there is. In fact, it may even have surprised you that a newsletter is a form of internet marketing. But it is a potent way for an online retailer to market his web site and online products or services to a focused customer audience.
A newsletter is also an outstanding way to sidestep the problem of failures of email delivery because customers will partner with you to make sure that newsletter gets into their email box. This is a big difference from cold call emails you may have used to use where you send purely marketing emails to customers only to see them get trapped in spam filters and sink to the bottom of spam quarantine folders never to be seen again. A newsletter is a marketing email that your customer wants to see. In fact, most times the customer made an effort to log onto your web site and find the newsletter subscription page to make sure they got on your mailing list. This is a refreshing change to see customers working hard to let you market to them rather than buying software to dump your marketing emails into a spam folder.
The reason newsletters are so effective at avoiding email delivery problems is that customers almost always will take the time and effort to be sure to add the sending email address of the newsletter you create for them to their "white list" of preferred email contacts. And because a newsletter can contain from ten to forty percent marketing material, it is like the customer is treating your marketing message like royalty and making sure it gets to them every week. In fact, customers become so used to getting that newsletter that if it did fail to arrive, they would take the initiative to find out why.
You don’t have to be a high speed publisher to create a nice newsletter format to use each week. You can buy templates for the newsletter format or use some of the default templates for newsletters that Microsoft Word comes with. But you may want to enlist the aid of your most computer savvy employee to create the newsletter each week because it calls for some patient and artistic layout talents to make it look good.
You might think of your newsletter as a web page that you deliver to your customers. It should have interesting and compelling content, just like your web pages do. But there are also plenty of spaces for advertising and promotional pieces that can be used to drive the customer to the web site to make sales. And because it is an e-document, links in the newsletter can immediately transport the customer to the point of purchase on your web site shopping card pages.
You can also use the articles you prepare for the newsletter to talk about your products and services in an informative way. By generating interest through text discussion of what you sell, that creates desire to make a purchase as well. You can even use the advertising space in your newsletter to sell to affiliates and partners who want to market to your customers. In that way, the newsletter can be a direct revenue generator even before it serves to guide subscribers to the purchase experience.
You may need to take advantage of the writers on your staff to create the content of your newsletter each week. But don’t overlook content that is already at your disposal. Articles, blog entries, discussions on message boards and letters you get asking questions about your products and services are natural article fill to use in your newsletter.
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